Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast and good morning. Good morning. Happy Sunday. We are hopefully gonna see you at church today for an awesome Sunday where we've got the kids' Christmas choir on stage for a good portion of the morning. This morning. Yeah, like three quarters of this the morning is gonna be that right. Yep. Yep. Just about. Yep. Just about. Yeah. No it's gonna be great. I know they've been hard at work and Priscilla Rapto as well as Julia Kogan have been huge in helping just to get them ready for this. I know we've got a lot of other volunteers that have been participating in that as well. Steve Yang, his team, our tech team who are, by the way, all volunteers. And we are so grateful for them. They do such good work for us week in and week out, and they are learning a lot on the fly and adapting and even going above and beyond and applying themselves outside the windows that they're serving in the church to learn more about the field and how to get better at mixing and everything else like that, just. A great team of servants that we've got here at this church. And that's across the board. And that's been from the very start. And one thing that people often say to me when they come and visit our church if they are not used to a church plant, is they just look around and they're in awe of how much labor goes into what we do week in and week out. And then on top of that, they're even more amazed that this is all done by those that are largely a volunteer force. And we're so thankful for that. And we've said that before, but let's just say it again. You guys are great in the way that you serve, whether that's on setup and tear down kids' ministry our tech team, our worship team, welcome greeters, ushers, everything across the board we are. So grateful for the labors of our people in how this works and that's really Paul's vision for the church and first Corinthians. So you guys do such a great job. We're so grateful for you guys. Yeah, I was gonna say in agreement with you, this is normative Christianity. This is the way it's supposed to be, and when you see it, it's beautiful and it's remarkable because you see what God had intended, which is that every part of the body is working together so that it builds itself up in love. That's Paul's point in Ephesians four, your part of the church body is incredibly critically important to the well-functioning and the sustaining of that body. If you choose not to be part of this, you talked about this I don't know, several years ago at this point, probably you brought Lego pieces and made people do the Legos, and you had people stand together and hold hands to, I don't remember that symbolically evidence the Legos. Yeah. We are all connected. Yeah. And God designed us to be connected. Yeah. And if you don't. You are robbing the body. Yeah. Because we need you. We desperately need you. And this is why and I say this all the time, forgive me for being a broken record here, but if you're at retirement age, don't leave to Florida in Arizona. Right. We want you here. We need you here. In fact, we just saw a demographic report. Yep. The oldest. Demographic that is 85 plus is also correspondingly the smallest demographic that's represented in our area. And there's a couple reasons for that. Obviously the one is that most people aren't living that old, but this on the other side of that, there are people who when you get to a certain age, you're called to greener pastures and warmer weather. Yep. Now, although Texas is pretty warm, but people leave is my point. We want you here and we need you here. And even though your role might change as you get older, that doesn't mean that we don't want you to be part of this body. So thank you for those of you who are being part of it in a critical sustaining way. We want more of y'all to do all that God calls you to do and to see the body built up. Yep. Yeah. This is that season that people who have been through this say, this is what you're gonna miss when you get a building. This is what you're gonna miss when you have kind of a plug and play situation at church. And okay we would like to have the opportunity to miss it a little bit at the same time. But I get what they're saying. I don't think I will. I'm just gonna say it. You don't think you, I don't think I'm gonna miss it. Well, I think what he meant is that everybody working together, like you need, you have so much more awareness of your need for people during this season than you do when. Nobody has to set up the chairs. Nobody has to drive church to the church. Sure, sure. Yeah. I remember, and I think back fondly to my dating and my courtship years with Kristen, but I love marriage a lot more. Oh, for sure. So I'm just gonna use that as my analogy and say that I will miss it, but marriage is gonna be better. Marriage is better. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Hey, last night we had the crist and so I know we're having to be a little bit prophetic. Recording this, but it was amazing. That's what I was gonna say. Yeah. Tons of fire. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know about that part. People prophesied. Okay. Yeah. And so now we're a different type of church altogether. Yeah. You heard your first folks, Hey, don't, you can't, you can't put God in a box, bro. Okay. You gotta let the spirit do what the spirit is doing. But besides all that, yeah, the brisket I'm sure was fantastic. Yep. It was a fun time. So here's a cool factoid. I think we talked about this, but lemme just remind you, this is the largest men's gathering we've ever had. Yeah. It is. Period. Yeah. For us as a church, and no shame in that whatsoever. We're always working to get better at what we do, but man, I wanna know what got everybody out, right? So if you hear this and you listen to the things that we say I'm curious as to what was different because this is exactly what we've done in years past. Maybe a small tweak. I have a guess as to what. Caused more of you to get excited about this and hey, I'm for this. Hear me say it. I'm for this, I want this. Help me figure out then what we did different. Yeah. To get you excited to go. So I'm for it. I can't wait to see the results of hopefully what happens here. I'd like to see people showing up on a regular basis to our monthly meetings. We need each other for those things. But yeah, let me know which on that note that was our last meeting at Grace Church in Frisco, because we are now gonna be up here. At Lighthouse Church, which is actually almost right across the street from where we meet for church on Sunday mornings. You know what? Now that I think about it, our first meeting at Lighthouse has to be with that song, my Lighthouse By Run Collective. Yes. Yes. By Lighthouse. Yes. Shining through the darkness, but we needed somebody to sing it with that accent. I know I can do, I can do it. Is it, I wish Scottish, I can't remember. I, I'm a master of accents. Are you? Not really, but I can do a couple of them, so maybe I'll give that a shot. Let's, I can do Creed. Yeah. Can you take the higher Scott Statman? What a voice. REM. Really? They're all the same accent. Yeah. Dave Matthews with the nasally. Anyways, you guys didn't come for this. I'm sure you're entertained, but you didn't come for, you know what, speaking of Yeah. Multiple people at this point. Now I've asked this multiple. Everybody's asking, well, not everybody at this point, and I'm not gonna say that. Some people have asked, well, number one. Someone was like, Hey, why didn't you guys do a, what's that called when Spotify's like, oh, these are your top listeners. The Wrapped. Yeah, the wrapped. I guess some makers of podcasts and other medi media like that you can do a special message to the people that listen the most. Okay. And they were disappointed that we didn't give a special message. Hey, here's your special message. Thanks for listening the most, everybody, we really appreciate you. Well it's funny 'cause I was looking at some of the people that sent us text messages of they're listening. Yeah, the one one was a 2%. I don't think I saw anybody who was in the top 1%, but I'm thankful. I wanna know how we do that. I wanna know how we do special messages to those people. That's cool. Or. We're not promising anything, but we're talking about doing swag at some point. Yeah, some finisher swag. For those of you who are finishing reading the Bible with us, or for those of you who are top listeners, we appreciate that as well. But that was one thing I heard. Another thing that I heard is, why don't you guys do a video podcast? Why not turn this into a video thing? Someone said, Hey, your guys' banter, and your chemistry is so fire. It's so lit. It's so six, seven, that we really wanna see it in person. Or at least a representation of our person. Well, why don't we do a video podcast? People wanna know. Yeah. Part of it is the video podcast that you're thinking about that you love so much. There's a lot that goes into making that something that you enjoy watching. It's not just, Hey, let's set up a camera and hit record. We could do that. In fact, we've had to do zoom the last couple of times because of, sickness and things like that. And we've got our Zoom cameras going so that we can at least see each other while we're doing the podcast. But the finished product that you enjoy as you watch a video podcast is edited and it's edited well most of the time. And you don't even realize it because they do it so smoothly. So for example. The cut to different camera angles like that doesn't happen just by default. That's somebody that's going, okay, I need to cut to this angle. And even not from speaker to speaker, but one person's talking, you're gonna shift camera angles as that person's talking. You're gonna zoom in, you're gonna cut to a side angle. That's all somebody who's editing that has an eye for that stuff. That we just don't have that person right now. If one of y'all are out there going, Hey. We have experience in that and we'd love to do that and make that happen. Let's talk. We're not opposed to it, but we also wanna put out good products, and that's one of the reasons why we don't do the video side. Yeah I told someone eyeballing it or really ball parking it. You're talking about four times the work. It's not like, oh, audio ad video. So. Probably double the work. It's a lot more effort. And not only that, we don't have a studio. We do this in your office usually. So we don't have a place where we can set something up and then leave it there, right? And kind of show up and just start recording. We would have to find a place where we could do that. We don't have that. So thank you for being interested enough in seeing us in person, but we probably are nowhere near that anytime soon. It's gonna be audio for the foreseeable future. We even flirted with briefly of, as you might have heard and remembered. We might not do it. On a live basis. We decided that we're gonna keep on doing this, but we talked about canning the episodes and just having them on repeat. But we're not gonna do that. We wanna stay with you guys. So all that to say thank you for your encouragement. Thanks for those of you guys who sent me your screenshots with your listening stats. We're so proud of you. Yes, we're grateful that you continue to do this with us day by day. We do it for you. We want you to be part of what we're doing. We want you to read your Bible. We do. And we want you to hold us to the standard that scripture holds us to, which is to make sure that we're dividing the word rightly, and we wanna teach you how to do that. We want you to use those same skills so that you don't have to be bamboozled or swindled by someone who comes off with some smooth tongue and some clear, clever language. We want you to know your words so that you're not shipwrecked like the Apostle Paul. Oh, speaking of, we should get into our passage for today, acts 27 and 28, where Paul is shipwrecked, where Paul's shipwrecked is. I appreciate you teeing that up so, so well. So well chapter 27, Paul is going to be on his way to Rome and he's going there under Roman guard. And so he is being taken by an a centurion of the August Augustine cohort. It says there named Julius, and this is in verse one. And Julius is a guy that I came to appreciate reading Acts 27 this time around just his favor that he treats Paul with In verse three, it says, Julius treated Paul kindly and gave him leave to go to his friends and be cared for. So Julius is not. A strict overlord. Here he is showing some compassion and favor to Paul. But on their way to Rome, there is going to be a massive storm that's going to come up. And it's so much so that hope is basically abandoned from the perspective of the sailors. It says in verse 19, on the third day, they threw the ship's tackle overboard with their own hands. And when neither sun nor Stars appeared for many days and no small tempest lay on us, all hope of our being saved was at last abandoned. So it's. The writing's on the wall. They're not getting any rescue boats to come out and free them. They don't have lifeboats to lower down into the sea that would be able to withstand the tempest. This is not a modern ship that they're on by any stretch of the imagination. So they're thinking, we're doomed. We're gonna run a ground or we're gonna be capsized but we're not gonna survive. But Paul stands up and gives a message and remember Paul had the Lord in the previous chapter that we read, stand next to him and say, Paul, you must. Appear for me in Rome. So Paul has that confidence with him saying, I know I'm going to get to Rome because Jesus himself told me that I will get to Rome. So he stands up in verse 22, says, I urge you to take, excuse me, to take heart because there's not gonna be any loss of life among you. So this is not only his confidence that what Christ told him, but probably more of what the spirit is conveying to him as he's prophesying here. Because he's saying, none of you all are gonna lose your lives either. But this is what we are going to go up against. We are going to go up against the storm. We're gonna have to suffer the loss of the ship. We must run a ground on some island, he says. So, Paul is comforting them and letting them know this is what's coming. This is what you need to prepare for, but don't despair of life because we are ultimately going to be saved. I feel like Paul is a good example of what it feels like to fly on some flights where the turbulence is crazy. I don't know how many flights you've been on, but some have, some that I've been on have been so turbulent. I, I'm thinking this is surely going to go down. I was on one small, what do you call it? Two-seater plane and it was, it was like cna, a tunnel hopper. Yeah, something like that. Well, actually bigger than a Cessna. It wasn't as small, but it was, it wast small enough where every bit of wind, it made the thing jostle a lot. So I, I was terrified. I never was afraid of flying, but at that point I was. And I prayed that God would help me land. And when I got to Terra firma, I did give it a kiss. I was so thankful. But this shows us here. One element of being a Christian, it's to trust that God's plan for your life means that you are invincible until it's your time to go. I think that's the way our old sending pastor used to put it. And you're invincible until God says it's time. It's time for you to die. And the difference between Paul and us is that Paul knows, at least in the short term where he's supposed to go, he's gonna make it to Rome. That's his goal. But for us, we know that it's like the song that we sing. In life and death. Christ is our hope. He's the one who guarantees that we will finish the course at his pleasure. And that means whether we live or die, we are the Lord's. And whether we will die in a car accident or die in a plane crash or whatever else in between, we can trust that he knows the plan. And until then, we are invincible. We can do what God has called us to do. We don't have to fret or be afraid. Paul's life is a demonstration of. Trust in what God is doing. Even if it meant, and he knew for a fact it was gonna mean that they were going to eventually not make it to the island in the ship, they were gonna swim too shore. But God has taken care of you. You can trust the Lord. Paul is not exceptional in that. Just because he's an apostle, you think, oh, of course God took care of him. That's him. What about measly old me? I just do bulletins, right? Just set up the chairs. God cares for each and every single one of us. Not one hair falls from your head. That is not determined by the Lord. Dear God, who knows what's happening. So trust what he's doing. Look at Paul's life and recognize God's looking out for you in the same way he looks out for Paul. Yeah, George Whitfield was the one I think originally that said, I am immortal until my work on Earth is done. Yeah. I like the way Pastor Mike said it better. Okay. A lot of times we talk about illusions for the New Testament, looking back to the Old Testament, but I'm wondering, as I was reading this, if there's a, an illusion here from Paul back to the upper room, even though Paul wasn't there. But I found it interesting because right before the shipwreck it says when he had said these things, he, and just the phraseology that. Luke uses here. He took bread and giving thanks to God in the presence of all. He broke it and began to eat. And they're a, about to face a shipwreck that is ultimately then gonna lead to their deliverance, but not without first enduring suffering. Is this communion? I don't know that it is communion. I just wonder if there's the illusion, if there's the callback to the upper room. Before the crucifixion, before the trial, before the suffering of Christ that led to deliverance. Here there's gonna be the shipwreck that's gonna ultimately lead to deliverance physically. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know that I'd pound the pulpit or even preach it, but we'd not encourage you to take communion by ourselves on a ship or It's true a flight. That's true. Generally speak. It is a interesting point, but we just do wanna emphasize we think that the Lord's Supper or a communion is sometimes meant call, it is meant for church. It is meant for a church ordinance. Yes. It's something that we do with the brothers and sisters. Yeah, no, fair. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm not arguing this is communion. Yes. I just wonder if even through Luke, there's the callback there, even in the words that he's using there. Right. Which by the way, just as you, since you mentioned him so far a few times now. Luke is with Paul at this point. Yeah. He keeps on saying us. We which is interesting because he's writing himself into the book and I guess whoever arrested Paul thought, you know, are you sure he could take your friends with you if you have a personal physician? Sure. Bring him along. Yeah. That's kind of cool. Yeah, it is. It is for sure, for sure. He's going to end up going through this shipwreck. It says in verse 43 the centurion wishing to save. Paul kept them from carrying out their plan as they were about to be shipwrecked. The people on board wanted to execute all the prisoners. But here's Julius again, and Julius is going to step in and say, Nope, we're not gonna do this. I'm gonna look out for Paul. I'm gonna protect him through this. And so Paul is spared the end up. Then in chapter 28 on the Isle of Malta. And there's an interesting scene here where they get there, they're cold, they're wet, and so they're gonna build a fire. And in building a fire, a viper, it says, latches onto Paul's hand. And the people there think, oh, well, he's clearly a man condemned to death for the crimes that he's committed. Because look, the God is still gonna kill him even though he survived the shipwreck. Paul survives the snake. Shakes it off and he's okay. And then they begin to attribute to the, to him the idea that he is somehow a god and Paul's quick, obviously to deny that and say, no, that's not the case. But it's interesting there. Another miracle perhaps, or this wasn't a venomous viper, although it seems that it was because the people assumed Paul's gonna die because of this viper, and they probably knew being local to the island what kind of viper it was. Yeah, it would be really hard for them. A mistake. I mean, they could make a mistake, but it seems like. The account suggests to us that it is a miracle. Yeah. And that's why they gave Paul an ear, should we expect a miracle like this? 'cause Mark 16 does tell us, we'll pick up snakes. And I was wondering if you were gonna pick that up. We're not. Yeah. Yeah. We'll pick up the snake and the text and say, should we expect that God will protect us if I see a cotton mouth out in the field. Should I pick him up and say, the Lord will protect me? Yeah. So Mark 16 is the contested ending of Mark. In fact it's an ending that we don't believe is original to the Gospel of Mark. We believe that it was probably added later on because the gospel of Mark the Manus, the strongest manuscripts that we have, it ends, I believe after verse. Eight, if I'm not mistaken. And it's a pretty abrupt end there. And so you've got a longer ending that does talk about handling snakes, but it's likely an addition later on and not original to the text. And that tradition may have emerged from situations and circumstances like this looking what happened to Paul. But it's not one that we are gonna take to the bank and say, this is something we should expect to do any more than we would expect to say. You should be able to, like Peter and James. Take a lame beggar and say, I say to you in the name of Jesus Christ, stand up and walk. And so just like that during this time if people were able to do that, it was a provision of God again to validate the message in the messenger, not something that is normative for the church practice. Yeah. I'm gonna go back to my prior point and say, you are invincible until God says it's time to go. So even though he should have died, I'm gonna say that God providentially and miraculously kept him alive so that he could do the work that God had called him to. He wasn't done yet. So God said, I'm not gonna let this poison kill you or this venom rather. It's a venomous snake. There's no such thing as a poisonous snake. They're venomous. He was venom, inized, whatever. He was bitten and he didn't die 'cause God kept him alive. 'cause he had work to do. Yeah. Now you're mortal until God work for you on earth is done. Don't test that on him. Don't go up to the top of your house and say, I'm gonna jump. Because you know what? I feel like God's got more for me and so I'm probably gonna survive. I really wouldn't test him too much on that. So if you see a rattlesnake, leave it alone. Don't pick it up. It's a great point. 'cause Jesus himself says that when the devil's like, Hey, just jump off this cliff, bro. I got you. Yeah. And he's like, don't test the Lord your God. Right. If Jesus himself, the son of God. Chose not to test the father, neither should you. Yeah. Yeah. Some interesting accounts with some personal people there at the end of chapter 28, or in chapter 28 here where he visits somebody, this man named Publius, who lays sick with a fever and would dysentery Paul visits him and prays, and then puts his hands on him and heals him. So even here we. Perhaps even more of a transition to what James talks about. That, that the prayer of a righteous man accomplishes much if anyone is sick among you, let 'em call for the elders and they're gonna lay hands on him and pray for him. And that seems to be what Paul's doing here. And God, does restore this man's health. But Paul's gonna arrive in Rome and we don't really get the rest of the story so much other than that, that Paul's gonna be here continuing to do what he's always done. And I think back to the book of of Philippians and the idea of him writing to them saying, look I'm here. I'm telling the Roman cohort and Caesar's Imperial Guard all about the gospel. The work of the ministry is multiplying even with me here in jail. It's a good thing. And I think that's what we see at the end of Acts 28 is just a narrative of the fact that that's what Paul was doing. And it says there in verse 30, he lived there for two whole years at his own expense and welcome to all who came to him proclaiming the Kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance. So in terms of rough timeline then this is. Ending about 60 to 62 ad we're not exactly sure of the precise timeframe, but this is the beginning of the end for Paul. We believe Paul does die under Ian persecution. That is Emperor Nero. And that will put him somewhere in the mid sixties, maybe possibly as late as 66, 67 ad I think. I don't think anyone would say he's, he dies that late, but this is the beginning of the end for Paul. He makes it to Rome. He's gonna write a couple letters that we're gonna read soon, but this is getting close to the end. God does preserve his life, but not indefinitely. Right. Paul's goal was to be. Faithful to the charge and the commission God gave him. And so should it be for you. And I we don't know how much time we have left, right? This could be, and I don't wanna be morbid, but this could be your last Christmas. And you just don't know. You ought to not be presumptuous. That God's gonna keep you alive for another 50, 30, 60, whatever years. Be thankful for what God gives you now. Utilize the time that he's given you. Do what you call are called to do. Build up the church. Love your family, live faithfully and do what Paul does. Live faithfully to the very end. This is what this was all about. This is what Christmas is all about. Special. Thanks for now. Last Christmas coursing through my head. Well, it gave you my heart. Yeah. Wham. Yep. Yeah, that's a good song. Yeah. Anyways, let's pray and then we'll be done with this episode. God thanks. Your reward and for the book of Acts as we've now made our way all the way through it. We are grateful for the testimony of the power of the church and the activity of the church. And we wanna be that type of church. We wanna be the type of church that is not sitting back. And waiting for people to come to us, but are going out and taking the gospel to other people. We wanna be a church that's inviting people that's present in our community. That's active in our community. And so help us to be that type of church, to take that away from the book of acts to say, okay, we need to go on the offensive. We need to go out and have people look at Compass Bible Church North Texas and say they're turning North Texas upside down. Lord would we be that type of church? That would be such a, an amazing testimony not to. Us or to our brand or anything else, but to the power of the gospel. And so we want to see that happen. And so I pray for your favor upon us, to enable us to have that kind of success as we do put ourselves out there to serve you in that way. And so we pray this all in Jesus' name. Amen. Keep your new Bible. Tune in again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. See you folks. Bye.

Well, thank you for listening to another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast! We're honored to have you join us. This is a ministry of Compass Bible Church in north Texas. You can find out more information about our Church at compassntx.org. We would love for you to leave a review, to rate, or to share this podcast on whatever platform you're listening on, and we hope to see you again tomorrow for another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast.

Yeah. I would agree with everything that you said